Ross Chapman's Blog

Church is not the same anymore. Perhaps a better way to say it is the Church cannot be the same anymore. The wineskins are old, and we're all feeling it--church leaders, committed church people, and sometimes church people. The shift happened, and it's continuing to happen. It's the shift brought on by the internet, racial reckoning, social media, new technology, and the pandemic. We'll be studying all that happened in the last ten years for the next one hundred years.

The Church needs new prac...

One of the books I’m reading for my doctoral work is The Meaning of the City by Jacques Ellul. He was a French sociologist who died in 1994 and is most known for one of his forty books called The Technological Society. On one of the pages, after underlining and starring most of the page, I simply wrote the word “HOPE” as big as I could down the margin of the page.

An insight I gained from Ellul is why God chose the city as the description and reality of God’s completed, whole, shalomic vision ...

What does a renewed city look like?

When God has the chance to build a city from scratch—the new Jerusalem (Isaiah 65:17-25) what kind of city does he build? What is his blueprint? What kind of city promotes the well-being of all people? What is God’s view of human flourishing? The city is a place of:

Forward looking people (v. 17) Gladness, delight, joy and well-being (vv. 18-19) Physical health and longevity (v. 20) Housing and food security (v. 21) Meaningful, enjoyable and rewar...

In Matthew 25:14-30, Jesus tells a story about three servants. Each was entrusted with a huge sum of money – twenty, forty, and one hundred years’ worth of wages. We’re talking about millions of dollars! Now, the man who left the money with the servants went on a journey, and when he returned, the ones with 40 and 100 years’ worth of wages doubled the value of what had been given to them. The man is very pleased with them! The servant who was given (just!) 20 years’ worth of wages did nothing wi...

Cities require individuals working competently in the service of others to create flourishing--just systems, wealth creation, places for dining and recreating, and a built environment that nurtures positive human interaction. Flourishing blooms through the work of intentional cultivation on the part of every resident.

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The city is also the image God chooses to describe the realization for what he intended from the beginning for all of his creation. People of faith care about making cities flour...

I started rereading Good to Great by Jim Collins. One of the things I want to continue developing is my understanding of what makes organizations great, whether that’s a business, educational institution, church, or non-profit organization. This is one of those books you may want to read more than once.

One chapter has left an indelible impression on me. Again. When I reread it, I remembered the fascination and surprise that hit me the first time I read Collins’ interesting research on what kin...

The Great Commission by itself is not the totality of the Christian mission. It must be linked to other "Greats." In this post, we briefly explore the relationship between the Great Commission and the Great Mandate.

An Ephiphany

It was a moment I may look back on as a personal epiphany. Why an epiphany? Because in my own journey to understand what God is doing in my city, I consistently encounter a myopic view of the Gospel rooted in the prevalence of understanding the Great Commission as pr...

Without clarity in our jobs, it's impossible to succeed. Though Jesus had clarity about his mission, his followers often disagree about his job description.

Hard Work in the Wrong Direction

Have you ever felt like you have been successful at your job only to find out what you have been crushing is only a small part of the bigger picture of your job? That’s crushing. Honest, hard work in the wrong direction is ineffective at best and detrimental at worst.

A lack of clarity about Jesus' job desc...

It's time to rethink the word "ministry," and it's time to change how we use it in every day conversation.

“How many of you are or hope to be in full time ministry?”

Out of the 100 or so people in the room, two raised their hand: me and a freshman that wanted to be a youth minister. I was confident God had called me to work in a church, so this was an easy one (and it was for the freshman, too).

That means 98% of the students in the room already believed they would enter their school the next...

Union: The Triune Worker God

The foundation of a biblical theology of work starts with the first three Hebrew words of the Bible. In the beginning, the triune God created. The Hebrew word for this kind of work is only used of God; it is the unique work God alone does.[1] Though each person of the Trinity is not explicit in the text, the language represents God as a plurality who works from the start. Within the Trinity, God works from the common union each person shares with the others. Both ...